also an invigorating influence.  If the Spirit of the living God do no way animate the gospel revelation, and breathe in it, we have no day of grace.  It is not only a day of light, but a day of power, wherein souls can be wrought upon, and a people made willing to become the Lord’s.  As the Redeemer revealed in the gospel, is the light of the world, so He is life to it too, tho neither are planted or do take root everywhere.  In Him was life and that life was the light of men.  That light that rays from Him is vital light in itself, and in its tendency and design, tho it be disliked and not entertained by the most.  Whereas therefore these things must concur to make up such a day; if either a man’s time, his life on earth, expire, or if light quite fail him, or if all gracious influence be withheld, so as to be communicated no more, his day is done, the season of grace is over with him.  Now it is plain that many a one may lose the gospel before his life end; and possible that all gracious influence may be restrained, while as yet the external dispensation of the gospel remains.  A sinner may have hardened his heart to that degree that God will attempt him no more, in any kind, with any design of kindness to him, not in that more inward, immediate way at all—­i.e., by the motions of His Spirit, which peculiarly can impart nothing but friendly inclination, as whereby men are personally applied unto, so that can not be meant; nor by the voice of the gospel, which may either be continued for the sake of others, or they contained under it, but for their heavier doom at length.  Which, tho it may seem severe, is not to be thought strange, much less unrighteous.

It is not to be thought strange to them that read the Bible, which so often speaks this sense; as when it warns and threatens men with so much terror.  For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a fearful looking for judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.  He that despised Moses’s law died without mercy, under two or three witnesses; of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith He was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?  And when It tells us, after many overtures made to men in vain, of His having given them up.  “But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me; so I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust:  and they walked in their own counsels;” and pronounces, “Let him that is unjust be unjust still, and let him which is filthy be filthy still,” and says, “In thy filthiness is lewdness, because I have purged thee, and thou wast not purged; thou shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any more, till I have caused my fury to rest upon thee.”  Which passages seem to imply a total desertion of them, and retraction of